Who Contributes to the Provision of Public Goods at the Community Level? The Case of Potable Water in Ghana

This article offers an analytical framework to explain participation in the provision of drinking water in communities in Ghana along with empirical evidence of the individual factors that influence this provision. Framed in the context of the debate about the devolution of responsibilities from the government to the users of public goods to increase management efficiency and sustainability, the study analyzes how individuals respond to potable water participation activities. Distinguishing activities by the type of participation incentives they offer, the study finds that social exclusion is more likely in activities that lack effort complementarities and which have larger impacts on output allocation. Appropriation of social benefits is found to determine participation more strongly than the appropriation of the natural resource itself.     

An Assessment of Social Welfare in Spain: Territorial Analysis Using a Synthetic Welfare Indicator

The aim of this paper is measure social welfare in Spanish provinces. To achieve this, we use the distance method P₂ to compose a synthetic indicator of welfare for 2007, the last year for which data are available. The index comprises information on different social indicators from various life domains and enables a classification of Spanish provinces, as well as a study of the impact of each individual indicator in order to determine provincial disparities in social welfare levels.     

Trends in Economic Homogamy: Changes in Assortative Mating or the Division of Labor in Marriage?

The growing economic resemblance of spouses has contributed to rising inequality by increasing the number of couples in which there are two high- or two low-earning partners. The dominant explanation for this trend is increased assortative mating. Previous research has primarily relied on cross-sectional data and thus has been unable to disentangle changes in assortative mating from changes in the division of spouses’ paid labor—a potentially key mechanism given the dramatic rise in wives’ labor supply. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to decompose the increase in the correlation between spouses’ earnings and its contribution to inequality between 1970 and 2013 into parts due to (a) changes in assortative mating, and (b) changes in the division of paid labor. Contrary to what has often been assumed, the rise of economic homogamy and its contribution to inequality is largely attributable to changes in the division of paid labor rather than changes in sorting on earnings or earnings potential. Our findings indicate that the rise of economic homogamy cannot be explained by hypotheses centered on meeting and matching opportunities, and they show where in this process inequality is generated and where it is not.     

Are Spontaneous Expressions and Emotions Linked? an Experimental Test of Coherence

We measured facial behaviors shown by participants in a laboratory study in which a film was used to elicit intense emotions. Participants provided subjective reports of their emotions and their faces were recorded by a concealed camera. We did not find the coherence claimed by other authors (e.g., Rosenberg & Ekman, 1994) between the displayed facial expressions and subjective reports of emotion. We thus concluded that certain emotions are not a necessary or sufficient precondition of certain spontaneous expressions.     

Clinical and behavioral evaluation of pathological gambling in Barcelona,Spain

This paper assesses both the clinical characteristics and gambling behavior of 45 pathological gamblers (40 male, 5 female, average age 41) in a psychiatric hospital in Barcelona, Spain. These pathological gamblers tend to have other addictions and psychiatric disorders in addition to their pathological gambling. Suicidal ideation and attempts were one of the most frequent complications with these patients. Slot and fruit machines were found to be the most preferred form of gambling. Loans and crime were frequently used by the gambler to finance his or her gambling. Nevertheless, the gambler is rarely aggessive, and legal problems resulting from serious crimes are the exception. The profile presentes is similar to that found among pathological gamblers in other countries.     

An Economic Wellbeing Index for the Spanish Provinces: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

 This article presents the estimation of a synthetic economic wellbeing index using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The DEA is a multidimensional technique that has its origins in efficiency analysis, but its usage within the social indicators context is particularly appropriate. It allows the researcher to take advantage of the inherent flexibility of DEA when assigning weights to the factors. The model itself carries out the aggregation and weighting of 8 partial indicators, which attempt to describe the four components of economic wellbeing suggested by Osberg (Royal Commision on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1985)), in order to assess the economic wellbeing of the 50 Spanish provinces. By using the index obtained in the analysis a “ranking” of the provinces is obtained. This ranking proves to be relatively similar to the one that corresponds to per capita income, although there are significant differences.     

Emotional Climate as Emotion Accessibility: How Countries Prime Emotions

Many everyday collective emotions are shared emotional conventions, that is, social practices with an attributed emotional meaning (e.g., complimenting as a sign of conventional love). Emotional conventions lead to a collective priming of some categories of emotion. For example, New Year Eve's emotional conventions prime words such as "happy." We define emotional atmosphere and emotional climate as emotion accessibility caused by the priming of specific categories of emotion linked to emotional conventions. We report two sets of data in support of this approach: (1) the accessibility of categories of emotion in relation to unusual historical events (the 1992 World Expo in Seville and the March–April 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid), and (2) the differential priming of specific categories of emotion on the Internet in different countries. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this approach to "emotional climate."     

Ecological and genetic consequences of fragmentation in a semiarid Mediterranean urban forest

Urbanization threatens biodiversity worldwide and is expected to increase in the future. This involves intensification of fragmentation and increase of urban forest remnants. Thus, it is important to understand the functioning of these patches for the preservation of local biodiversity. Mutualistic interactions such as seed dispersal have a key role in the dynamics of plant populations and could help to mitigate the negative effects of fragmentation on wild plant populations. In this context, we have used the mastic Pistacia lentiscus, a common Mediterranean shrub, as a model to study the interaction between seed dispersal by birds and the local genetic diversity of individuals in a highly fragmented semiarid forestry area of the Iberian Southeast (Murcia, Spain). Results reveal a high genetic diversity and a lack of differentiation between shrub patches of P. lentiscus in the area, probably as a result of a strong, but rather recent fragmentation, and an apparently poor contribution of birds to the dispersal of Pistacia seeds. However, the existence of latent impacts cannot be discarded, since at least one of the patches shows some signs of inbreeding.     

PI3K pathway and Bcl-2 family. Clinicopathological features in prostate cancer

The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT/mTOR pathways and Bcl-2 family play a central role in prostate cancer (PC). The aim was to determine influence in the biochemical progression in PC. To evaluate the association between clinic pathological and immunohistochemical variables, Spearman’s test was performed. Log-rank test and Kaplan–Meier curves were used for survival comparisons. To explore the correlation of the studied immunohistochemical parameters and the established prognostic variables with biochemical progression, univariate and multivariate Cox proportional Hazard regression analyses were performed. Spearman analysis showed correlation between stroma expression and tumor expression of PI3K with biochemical progression (p?=?.009, p?=?.004), respectively, and tumor immunohistochemical score with biochemical progression (p?=?.051). In the multivariate Cox regression model, only PI3K was retained as independent predictors of biochemical progression. In stroma expression, PI3K is (HR 0.172, 95% CI 0.065–0.452, p?=?.000); tumor expression, PI3K is (HR 0.087, 95% CI 0.026–0.293, p?=?.000), and tumor immunohistochemical score (HR 0.382, 95% CI 0.209–0.697 p?=?.002). Our results suggest a role for prostatic expression of PI3K was prognostic markers for PC. PI3K/AKT/mTOR and Bcl-2 family are becoming an important therapeutic target and predictive biomarkers of onset and progression of PC.     

Twenty Years of Research on the Relationship Between Economic and Social Performance: A Meta-analysis Approach

This study examines the role of political efficacy and social networks in rural China to understand the social characteristics that might affect an individual’s disposition to join in public deliberations. A model is developed and empirically tested by Partial Least Squares analysis. This shows active involvement in public deliberation to be positively influenced by political efficacy (with external political efficacy being a partial mediator), high internal or external political efficacy, and a high internal efficacy leading to high external political efficacy. Social networks have a moderating effect, individuals with a high social network status having an enhanced positive internal political efficacy-public deliberation involvement but weakened positive external political efficacy-public deliberation involvement. The research advances the theoretical understanding of complex political psycho-behavior relationships and provided insights into the role of social settings. The findings could also help boost deliberative democracy in such limited democratic societies as China.